I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.

It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a “pro-piracy” piece, it is merely attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies refuse to acknowledge.

What’s clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in “The Hangover 2″ (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)

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“By making, in essence, an infinite number of copies, you are depriving the intellectual property holder of *scarcity power.* The price of any good or service – in this case a DVD or – lies not in its intrinsic value (which is almost zero) but in its relative scarcity.”

This is THE lie. There is no scarcity of creators or of created works. Almost all of us have become creators of intellectual property by creating blogs, videos, songs etc. I specifically uncopyright all my works and place them in the public domain for anyone to copy and use. Even the software that I SELL is free for anyone to copy and use if they do not want my service.

Copyright is a anachronism in a freely sharing world.

There is no intellectual scarcity in mankind only artificially induced monopolies. Only intellectual morons will believe otherwise.

Sorry riprowan, but your argument is flawed. The author is not claiming that whoever offers a solution with n-1 steps will win, but that the argument is multifaceted, for example it’s mentioned (in passing) that a bonus is you don’t have to feel guilty for doing something illegal – which the pirate websites will never have in their favour.

The moviestudios are indeed exacerbating the situation with their arcane pricing models and desire to extend undue control over the end product as many people choose to pirate rather than purchase as a form of civil disobedience. That they don’t consider this is absurd.

People WANT to give them money on reasonable terms and will do so given a sufficiently simple and comprehensive solution – for example, see iTunes/Amazon MP3/Spotify etcetera etcetera etcetera. To suggest this model can’t work flies in the face of the real world, where it is, you know, actually happening right now.

While nobody disagrees that IP holders, in the past, have been known to exert “scarcity power”, it does not follow that anybody therefore ever has been explicitly granted the RIGHT to exert “scarcity power”.

No such “right” has been negotiated, nor have I ever seen anyone successfully argue that such a “right” would serve the common good in any way conceivable.

In fact, “scarcity power” is entirely an unitended by-product of the old system wich was tied to tangible objects. IP holders sometimes exerted it simply because the could. Now things have moved on and so they can’t anymore. “Rights” do not even enter into it.

Here here ripowan! It’s just like slave ownership. It doesn’t matter how hard you think a master is beating his slave. What gives you the right to deprive him of HIS PROPERTY?

Just like pirates, those stupid abolitionists just don’t get it. Slaves aren’t people, and anyone who says so is a dirty, dirty liar! So let’s all get off of our high horses and stop pretending there is some moral good served here by the likes of Harriet Tubman and her…underground railroad.

You are destroying the economy, and how do you expect the South to compete with the North? They have machines! We can’t possibly compete with machines if we can’t have colonies of forced laborers of a specific race we deem suitable for it.

So let’s call them what they are, CRIMINALS! It’s sad so many apologists show up to side with those criminals. One day, though, one day those abolitionists will wake up and see the real world around them. Until then, let’s expose the lie for what it is. Theft of property! ;p

While you are perhaps correct, “scarcity power” is definitely an intangible. If I shoplift, I have removed from sale something that the retailer has paid money for. In order to make a sale of that item, he will need to go out and spend more money. That is a tangible loss.

I didn’t see anything in the article that suggested that any type of pirating is defensible. But when the average person considers it defensible, then the rights holder already has problems that won’t be addressed by further legislation.

Well, the problem is essentially here. There is no thing called a *scarcity power* in real world what comes to data (e.g. movie). It can be replicated infinitedly without any actualy cost. Anybody can do it and nothing is scarce. Talking about something like that is nonsense.

Yes, it is probably morally wrong to do these copies, but what distribution companies do is even more wrong. Come on. A child can make a copy of a movie for his thousand FB friends for free but studios are ripping some $10 per each. That’s just absolutely crazy.

If you could order e.g. infinitely available potatoes for free instantly delivered to your home, shouldn’t potatoe business just call it a day? Yes they should. There just wouldn’t be any business left. Value of that market would be $0.

These are called technological revolutions. They’re like a force of nature: steam engine, lightbulb, whatever. Every time an old luddite industry has been replaced by something that is much much more cheaper and effective. If you don’t go with it, you’re gone. Only heritage manufacturers will persist and they will suffer badly most of them going bankrupt. The earlier you adopt or invest in the new technology, the more you’ll win.

Therefore, for the user, the only cost that is left is the amount of time you have to invest into getting that movie and that’s where the business lies.

If you can reduce the time for starting a movie from 15 minutes to 30 seconds and will only charge for the time difference according to minimum wage, you’ve gotten the value of the product, which is: $7.25($/h) * 14.5(min) / 60 (min/h) = $1.75 + VAT. It’s quite close to the $2 price that has been pointed out in the article, but it can actually be calculated easy as this.

By the way. These companies have never given any value for the free marketing they’ve gotten from piracy. I’ve purchased much much more music since I fould out I can look for interesting artists from “online”.

Nowadays I’m using Spotify for that purpose because it makes everything just a bit easier. It is just too bad it doesn’t have all the record companies. If I could listen to their music from there, I might buy a vinyl or a cd to support the artist and get it in perfect quality. Now I will never hear about them.

Since actual scarcity (i.e., rivalrousness in the physical realm) is the bane of human existence — it is the source of all conflict, resulting in famine, war, mortality (scarcity of time), etc — then I contend that trying to force this terrible quality into the metaphysical realm is not only a bad thing but, as the article points out, impossible because it simply isn’t reality. All Intellectual Property laws can boil down to are as redistribution schemes in physical goods. You know, where there actually is scarcity.

When the product can be copied infinitely, there is no scarcity. On the internet, intellectual property CAN be copied infinitely; supply becomes infinite relative to demand. No one individual or organization caused this. It is simply a fact of the internet and the information age that information may be copied endlessly. Nothing was taken, stolen, or denied. The world, and the market, changed.

The primary factor that most people will use to determine their method of acquisition in this very real scenario is convenience (and in some cases, risk will be considered, but this is rare). That is the point the article is making, and I find it to be a well reasoned and valid one.